30.March.2014

Russ Fulcher's signature issue

It's not easy to tease apart fundamental ideology from most favored
tactic, but when it comes for Russ Fulcher's right-lurching bid to take
the title of Governor away from two-termer C.L. "Butch" Otter, we might
as well take him at
his
word that running against Obamacare is top of his list. We don't
have to care whether his antipathy is based on the Affordable Care Act's
particulars, or Otter's having helped Idaho to get its own healthcare
insurance exchange started, or both.

We do very much have to care if his Where the Candidates Stand diatribe
is actually persuasive to more than the most extreme citizens of the
state. Fulcher diverges from fact to fantasy in imagining that Idaho is
"the only Republican-controlled state in the country to implement the
president's health care law," as if the law were magically unimplemented
anywhere Republicans get to say so.

Otter and his fellow travelers from far-right to near-right have
agreed so far that dragging their feet on Medicaid reform and expansion
is the right thing to do, from last year, to this, keeping the
legislative session
smoothest
and near-shortest (leaving as much time as possible for primary
campaigning) by pushing it off to "study," maybe next year, and never
mind how many tens of thousands of people will be left without
coverage.
(The
Kaiser Family Foundation estimated it would be 54,780 in Idaho, back
in October.)

Fulcher would promise more of the same next year, no solutions to the
problem of unaffordable health care for the most vulnerable people in
our state. Incredibly, he offers this suggestion:

"[L]et's expand charity care in Idaho. Idaho has some 13 charity care
clinics that provide health care services for free. Staffed with
volunteers who work tirelessly, these clinics are saving taxpayers money
and taking pressure off county budgets by helping people to get more
regular care. Canyon County Community Clinic, for example, saved Canyon
County's hospitals $630,000 last year through preventive care of
diabetes patients. Better care at less cost. This is a winning
combination."

That's right; let's have more healthcare professionals
work for free—and tirelessly!—so that the rest of us
can save money.

Oh, and less regulation will help: "Idaho should eliminate many of its
insurance restrictions." We "can lead the nation in health care choice,
competition, and security" by waving the Tea Party magic wand.

"The federal government brings nothing but rules, red tape, and costs.
They create uncertainty for Idahoans, making our people wonder if
they'll keep their insurance, and, if they do, what it will cost."

Commenter Jeremiah Lynch pointed out three of those damned federal
rules:

You can no longer be denied coverage due to preexisting
conditions.

Insurance companies are no longer allowed to cancel your coverage if
you get sick.

No more lifetime limits on essential coverage.

29.March.2014

My success story is a bit checkered

The steady flow of reminders and/or warnings about the March 31 deadline
that never applied to me are still coming in, for
a couple more days, presumably. (Will they give up on April 1? Or has
there been an extension and/or waiver that can keep it going?)

The first one this morning was from "The HealthCare.gov Team," and
repeated the standard statements that don't apply to me, including

"Remember, if you don’t sign up by March 31st, you can't get covered
until next year."

leaving me to wonder what virtue there is in the whole cycle of "open"
and then closing enrollment. Deadlines provoke action, I understand that
well enough. But forcing all the account creation, setup, and renewal
activity into just PART of the year makes everthing more likely to crash
and burn. You can hire support agents for short-term work... and then
lay them off, and ensure that next year's crop will be inexperienced for
the high-volume, high-stress push at the next annual go.

While I could keep expanding my collection of irrelevant emails, I
thought what the heck, let's see if I can turn things off. Clicking
upstream to "manage my subscription preferences," I'm dumped to the
healthcare.gov login and on login, am reminded I have an "application"
but haven't "enrolled." No hint of subscriber preferences there, or
under "My Profile." Let's start by REMOVEing the application, for which
I have no further use. Big splashy warnings, but OK, it did that.

Looking, looking, looking try "contact us" again, which has no email and
no chat but oh, "manage subscriber preferences," there's what I want.
New site, new form, provide my email address again (so, uh, anybody can
change my preferences?!) and what do I have? I'm subscribed to 8
"topics," listed as

3/31 Pick a Plan APTC

3/31 Pick a Plan APTC 2

3/31 Pick a Plan APTC 3

3/31 Pick a Plan APTC 4

3/31 Pick a Plan APTC 5

3/31 Pick a Plan APTC 6

Enroll 12/9 5pm

For Account Holders

I'll keep the "For Account Holders," but flush the rest. Then it wants
me to help them help me by having me answer "questions" of which there
is only one on their minds: which state am I in? Healthcare.gov (among
many other goverment entities) surely knows that, but govdelivery.com
did not, huh.

Now for the other channel, Organizing for Action, a.k.a.
my.barackobama.com which, really, shouldn't be having this conversation
with me at all, but helpfully encourages (or annoyingly nags, depending
on your POV) and provides a link to healthcare.gov. Let's try its update
path, and say "no mas!" Subscription update offers to be quiet if I
already have insurance, and say "yes" and it says

I can give them my first and last name and email and ZIP and a link to a
video or photo (recommended) or type my story here (minimum of 20 words
required). I had more to say though, and didn't care to fill in another
form, or read the
Terms of
Submission, so here.

28.March.2014

Not the civil war I was expecting

Richard A. Viguerie pioneered political direct mail, according to
himself, and the footer he keeps appending to his press releases coming
out of ConservativeHQ.com. It's a claim to fame, but fame is fleeting,
and there isn't a lot of talk about "direct mail" these days, even
though we still get some.

(Today's was from "Club for Growth Action" and
was not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee, but you
don't have to be a nuclear engineer to figure out that (a) they really
don't like Representative Mike Simpson, and (b) they are bat-shit crazy,
but maybe crazy like a bat out of hell to associate the word "Liberal"
with the candidate they hope to defeat in the May primary. But I
digress.)

Anyway, Viguerie also likes to quote The Nation having once
called him "one of the creators of the modern conservative movement" and
the Washington Times having called him one of the
"conservatives of the century." Which century? He doesn't say. Which
Times? The one its founder, Sun Myung Moon promised would become
"the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."
Not that Viguerie imagines himself godlike. Probably just an angel.

ANYway, here he is, firing for effect:

"Republican Congressional leaders, less than three hundred miles from
Fort Sumter where the Confederates fired on the federal government and
launched a horrific four-year American Civil War, are meeting to declare
a civil war against conservatives who are the base of the Republican
Party."

Presumably Viguerie would like anybody-but-Simpson and whoever it is the
Club for Growth and Tea Party types would like, to advance
"the core values" of "limited-government, fidelity
to the constitution, lower taxes, balanced budget, significantly
reducing the size, scope and reach of the federal government."

He would not like "candidates receiving support from the Ruling Class,
Crony Capitalists such as Karl Rove, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch
McConnell," or those named individuals.

Combining castigation with celebration, he takes some pleasure in the
weekend meeting at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island in Florida
and the planning strategizing to raise money and defeat
the likes of whom he likes, as

"proof positive that the Republican Establishment thinks the Tea Party is
alive, strong, and a major threat to their existence."

25.March.2014

What's my deadline?

Pretty much all the news about the new health care law, the rollout of
the health care insurance exchanges, the requirements put upon (or
waivers granted) on employers and individuals have been based on the
assumption of calendar year insurance policies. For "historical
reasons," my insurance fiscal year has been running May 1 to April 30,
and most of the date-related news hasn't applied to my case.

It's been good to be some months back from the bleeding edge; when
Healthcare.gov was being deemed a "disaster" by its critics, I was free
to consider it merely "unfortunately not ready for prime-time." I did
get in and exercise the "application" front-end of the process, which
worked about as well as it could, given that it requires predicting
what for me is rather unpredictable, future income.

Then while "you can keep your insurance" was sorted out, and ultimately
revised at least for a while, I was able to wait and see... that
actually, I could keep my insurance, even though it "may not be"
compliant with the Affordable Care Act as the letter my
insurance company sent me in January said. There was a long list of
particulars, and no specifics about whether or how
it fell short, but when it came down to the overview chart of what was
and wasn't covered, with what deductibles, co-pays and "co-insurance,"
my old, non-compliant policy looked as good or better than the
alternative Regence compared it to.

And the premium was way cheaper. It's up "only" 15% for my new year, but
as compared to up 100%-ish for an ACA policy.

Even though the March 31 deadline wasn't my deadline,
Healthcare.gov was sending "last minute" reminders, and I was encouraged
to (1) call the feds and get confirmation that it didn't apply to me,
and (2) call Regence to sort through my options before deciding whether
I wanted to shop further.

So what do you know? I like my insurance, and I get to keep my
insurance. At least until December 31, and who knows, maybe until April
30, 2014.

23.March.2014

Play money

Call me old-fashioned, but not real old-fashioned. I'm ok with
Federal Reserve Notes, but don't feel the need for gold (or silver)
backed currency. So the whole Bitcoin business is entertaining, but not
something that has any financial bearing on my monetary exchanges.
I didn't suppose the recent troubles spelled the end of it, even as they
certainly will encourage many people to keep staying away.

"In its statement from its chief executive, Mark Karpeles, the company
said that after it filed for bankruptcy, it began researching the
wallets that were used before June 2011. That, the company said, is when
it discovered the coins, which represent about 24 percent of the coins
that were missing when the site failed.

"Last month, Mt. Gox said it had lost 750,000 of its Bitcoin customers’
holdings and more than 100,000 of its own coins — essentially its entire
stock of Bitcoin, worth more than $450 million. The found coins are
worth about $116 million based on today’s rate of $578, according to the
online Bitcoin index CoinDesk."

Maybe they just overestimated their losses.

And here's a fun fact I did not know: "At its peak, Mt. Gox handled
about 80 percent of all Bitcoin transactions," before it began losing
market share to "more sophisticated foreign exchanges like BTC-e, based
in Bulgaria, and Bitstamp, in Slovenia, last year." I imagine Bulgaria
and Slovenia are nice places, but I don't think they carry as much
full faith and credit as the home of the greenbacks. At least not where
I live.

21.March.2014

Tools for radicals

Apparently some folks were upset by the idea that Microsoft would dig
through a hotmail user's account to look for evidence of criminal
activity, because... email is supposed to be super-secret, or something.
It can't be confusing a hotmail user with a "customer," because if
you're getting your service for free, you're not quite that, are
you?

Assuming
the
Seattle P-I piece covers the facts in general outline, I'm not
seeing cause for indignation. Mr. K. divulges company trade secrets
to Mr. B., and then Mr. B. hopes to get a company insider to
authenticate the stolen bits, but Ms. M reports the breach to higher-ups
instead.

Mr. B.'s use of hotmail (with an insufficient attempt at concealing his
identity) combined careless, chutzpah and stupid in some measure,
violates the Terms of Service a few ways to Sunday, and, yeah, got
Mr. K. caught. Mr. B. makes a pretty good case for conspiracy, too:

“I would leak enterprise today probably,” Kibkalo told the blogger
during an Aug. 2, 2012 exchange, according to charging papers.

“Hmm,” the blogger replied. “Are you sure you want to do that? Lol.”

Told the leak would be “pretty illegal,” Kibkalo is alleged to have
responded “I know :)”

Other than that, sounds like an attractive service for at least
everyone who's been hacked already. Several pages more, and I see
they're looking for $22.50/month for the "Ultimate" or $9 for the
"Lame-o" service. (No, they didn't actually call it that... just
plain LifeLock®.) 10% off and some Award Miles for
the
United promo code, with a dense block of tiny gray print behind two
asterisks, because it's comprehensive, don't you know.

The alternate service from the malware community could be named
"Free to
Be... You and Me" which is of course taken, but not like
that would stop them, right?

19.March.2014

The money pit

All I know about the DBSI bankruptcy is what I've read in the papers,
and I'm not sure I followed all that, but the
feature
blaring on Sunday's front page was a heck of a read. Never
mind the small supporting businesses—and the city of
Boise—who got sucked into the vortex of more than a thousand
people doing business with the company, not getting paid, and now facing
demands for their trouble. With 22,000 claims looking for
$102 billion—an average closer to $5 million than
4—and a company with a tiny fraction of that in real estate
assets, there is going to be a lot of disappointment.

Sorting out the company's finances has been difficult, federal
bankruptcy Judge Peter J. Walsh said in court documents. Company funds
were commingled among hundreds of DBSI entities, creating a "hopeless
tangle," he said.

"The ledgers maintained by the various DBSI entities reflect
transactions of staggering complexity," Walsh wrote in one court
opinion. "Yet, those ledgers do not provide a reliable guide because the
actual movement of funds was frequently quite different than what was
recorded."

Hopeless tangle of staggering complexity with ledgers that don't
actually follow the money... there may even be some lawyers who
won't get paid out of this.

I have no idea where what started as a sort of family real estate
investment went south, but the "guaranteed returns of 6% annually for
shopping centers and 7% for office buildings" is one of the red flags.
Life and real estate don't have that kind of guarantee, and years before
the bubble burst, things weren't adding up. The one sentence in the
"Early Years" section that caught my eye for its impenetrability was
this:

"The company made money from the sale of investments, from management
fees and from profits generated after investors recouped their
investments."

Selling investments doesn't "make" money; it's an exchange of assets.
Investors pony up cash in exchange for something, and the company
has the liability to go with the cash.

How the 89 counts of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering play out
will be a challenge for the courts, unraveling that hopeless tangle.

17.Mar.2014

Gen Mobile, meet malware

Mihajlo Prerad, "International Sales Professional" has an interesting
post on LinkedIn, with very nice infographics, starting with the classic
London Subway Map theme (and a gratuitious river Thames?) charting
10
years of mobile malware, from the "first worm affecting Symbian
Series 60 phones" (wha?) to a fake banking app crossing the "Android
debugging bridge" from an infected PC.

"Android is the most targeted OS (which is not any news, as Android is
holding more than 70% of the market share) ... [and] is responsible for
almost 99% of all mobile malware, as published by both Cisco and
Kaspersky Labs."

To the victor belong the, um, spoils.

Turning on my first Android device the other day, I was struck by the
start-up wiring to gmail, and thence Google, the same sort of way Apple
o/s devices tie you to Steve Jobs' mother ship. The marketing and
intelligence dossier those corporate juggernauts collect on their
customers are more benign, we hope. The less benign things are diagrammed
(in the
Sophos
Mobile Security Threat Report) under headings of "surveillance,
impersonation, data theft, financial and botnet activity," which I guess
are the usual suspects. This possibly arresting fact: "82% of the
apps track you."

Maybe the tracking has a purpose useful to you, for getting directions,
are finding out where the nearest sushi restaurant is. But even if
what's tracked is "just" metadata,
it's
amply personal. A modest study with voluntary, crowdsourced data
from 546 participants over several months provides some cautionary
tales; check out the "Pattern Results" just before the conclusion.

Beyond hand-wringing, what to do? The short list starts with
using a password or PIN, and putting a "Mobile Security" app at the top
of your shopping list.

Multinational

Leading with "Navy Seals" is an attention-grabbing headline, news from
the BBC in Africa that they
boarded the
rogue Libya oil tanker "Morning Glory" and took control, with no one
being hurt. So that seems good. It's the first I've heard of there being
a rogue oil tanker, and if anyone has sorted out the rival factions in
post-Gaddafi Libya, I didn't see that story, either. The Libyan
government National Oil company owned the oil, the vessel "was said to
have been operated by an Egyptian company" and had been flying a North
Korean flag before the trouble started. Those colors ran: "officials in
Pyongyang said it had been deregistered because of the incident."

"The BBC's Rana Jawad in Tripoli says the US move is likely to act as a
deterrent to any further attempts to illicitly buy oil from the
rebel-controlled ports."

"Libya continues to suffer from a chronic absence of security and law and
order, with almost daily assassinations, bombings and kidnappings, in
addition to a plethora of common crimes."

16.March.2014

All in the family

Following up on the Consumers Union-Trader Joe's-antibiotics in
livestock story, some pushback from
a veterinian with 33 years' experience working on Idaho dairies
in
last Thursday's letters. Opening with "shame," and an accusation of
"grandiose false statements," Carl Woodburn proceeds to redefine the
problem away:

"There are no 'industrial farms,' just large family ones."

Idaho may be famous for potatoes, but it's been
more dairy
state since 1997. The number of dairies continues to drop while the
number of milk cows go up, making the "large family farms" ever-larger.
A
study by Dr. Don Holley and John Church
covered roughly the same period as Woodburn's career, during which
annual milk production in Idaho has increased by
well over 500%. We're now #3, behind California and Wisconsin,
and more than half a million dairy cows call Idaho home.

CU's
campaign
is not about the dairy industry though; it's about livestock raised for
direct human consumption. And contrary to the good doctor's peremptory
claim,
"sub-therapeutic"
use of antibiotics has been a routine part of the livestock industry
for a long time. Woodburn doesn't know how routine any more than
we do: the large families behind the industry don't publicize their use,
and we're left to infer what we can from other sources. One such
inference is that "15-17 million pounds of antibiotics [are] used
sub-therapeutically in the United States each year."

Ides.March.2014

It's not just those people

It's everyone. Paul Ryan checked his transcript
(on moralizing gadfly William Bennett's radio show, no less) and
declared
"it is clear that I was inarticulate about the point I was trying to
make. I was not implicating the culture of one community—but of
society as a whole."

There's a valid point in there somewhere, but the wide scope of his
hand-waving is yes, somewhat distracting. Calling for "integrat[ing]
people into our communities" is also an interesting idea coming from
someone who represents southeastern Wisconsin and works in Washington
D.C.

As justification for continued promotion of the supposed panacea of
cutting taxes and government, it's also self-serving and disingenuous.
But the road to walking back his inarticulativity goes
through
the Congressional Black Caucus, so there's a step toward integration
right there.

"Ryan boasts of the Gaelic half of his ancestry, on his father’s side.
“I come from Irish peasants who came over during the potato famine,” he
said last year during a forum on immigration.

"BUT with a head still stuffed with college-boy mush from Ayn Rand, he
apparently never did any reading about the times that prompted his
ancestors to sail away from the suffering sod. Centuries of British rule
that attempted to strip the Irish of their language, their religion and
their land had produced a wretched peasant class, subsisting on
potatoes. When blight wiped out the potatoes, at least a million Irish
died — one in eight people."

12.March.2014

Beef: what's for dinner?

Trader Joe's came to town, which has a lot of people excited, and
Consumers Union used the occasion to promoting the idea that cattle
should "just say no to drugs," with full-page ads in the
Idaho Statesman, aimed at the general public, mostly, and Trader
Joe's, for the free ride. In yesterday's paper, the rebuttal from "Tree
Top Ranches featured cow butts, and three inch-high letters inviting the
CU to BUTT OUT! Catchy. Also catchy is the top line
pointing at some cows as DRUG USERS "according to Consumers
Union."

My takeaway is that this Tree Top Ranches I never heard of before today
has some money to burn, McClatchy must be well-pleased to host the
"discussion," and that this weird marketing campaign needs a better ad
director. You don't want to reinforce the idea you're arguing against,
and saying CU called cows "drug users" does just that. Don't blame the
cows of course, it's not like they're recreational users, or have
any say in the matter.

What I noticed down below the "Welcome to Idaho, Trader Joe's!" with the
sort of positive message "applaud[ing] Trader Joe's for being an
industry leader" and "giving us options." We can buy not just "much
higher priced natural & organic beef," but also, some of that
"traditional" kind.

Referring to the "tradition" of raising cattle on antibiotics,
really?

The DRUG USERS and the BUTT OUT and the handsome photo of three cow rear
ends, the restful green ink at the bottom, and the plain paper bag with
Trader Joe's logo lead to a strange call to action: they want me to call
Trader Joe's (at the 800 number shown) to thank them for giving
Idaho choices.

Not much about who the "we" in the ad is. A ranch doesn't need web
marketing that much, but we understand
from
Kentucky Derby dot com that at least part of Larry and Marianne
Williams' business is raising thoroughbred horses, and that they're
"longtime supporters of Boise State University."

If you're happy with your "choice" to take whatever the ag industry
serves up and want to call Trader Joe's, well, you can have a gander at
the Williams' ad. Or call 800 221-2063 to tell Trader Joe's whatever you
like. If you can believe
@GetJoeOffDrugs
you could be the millionth caller, one way or the other.

If you'd like to learn more about the issue before you jump on Tree
Top's bandwagon and make that call, the Consumers Union is more
forthcoming about their campaign to
curb
the major public health crisis we're inviting by the industrial use
of antibiotics, feeding 80% of all antibiotics sold in the US to
livestock. Following CU's link to the Food and Drug Administration site,
I see that the program for
phasing
out certain antibiotic use in farm animals is a voluntary
plan. That's the "fastest, most efficient way to make these changes."
If they do actually get volunteers.

9.March.2014

Donna and Kim and Lawerence and Mitch

Cynthia Sewell has
a
nice feature in today's Idaho Statesman with a curious inside
look into the state employment of the wives of two candidates for
Idaho's Secretary of State. It seems Mrs. Toryanski and Mrs. Denney
crossed paths at the Idaho Commission on Aging, and when Denney left in
a reorganization at the end of 2010, she left behind evidence that she'd
been moonlighting in her office. The computer forensics expert Toryanski
hired to investigate didn't pan out because the ICOA had wiped the
computer's HD in the process of updating the o/s, whoops, in spite of
the Department of Administration and other governments being advised
by the ISP "over the course of many years to hold out the hard drives of
employees that had left state employ for at least one year," just in
case.

But "non-forensic analysis" apparently sufficed to turn up
invoices accounting for Denney's "time worked for MyStateUSA from
October 2003 through April 2006" and "timesheet accounts for daily hours
worked" during January 2008, all while she had a job with the state.
Sewell says the investigator

concluded that Denney was working for My State USA while working for
the aging commission: “Donna Denney’s Internet history, emails, and
document attachments show she conducted My State USA business during
work hours for the Commission on Aging.”

He said Denney had accessed her My State USA email account from her
state–owned computer, and he found more than 200 emails sent from
Denney’s state account to My State USA founder Claudia Bitner, as well
as 150 emails Bitner sent to Denney’s state account.

Not that there's, um, anything criminally wrong with that, since
there was no policy against moonlighting, and we don't have a law
against "theft of time" just yet. (The legislature is still in session
though!) And ok, the invoice from “Denney Consulting and Contracting” in
Midvale is not criminal, even if that sole proprietorship doesn't have
to register with the state.

It sure is some sloppy desk cleaning, though.

Sewell gave the Denneys' attorney (and former Lt. Governor) David Leroy
the last word, just a little innuendo to say goodbye, rebutting
Mitch Toryanski's speculation that the discussion of conflicts of
interest “will likely increase public interest in the secretary of
state’s duty to oversee and enforce document recording laws and campaign
finance disclosure laws.”

Leroy suggested rephrasing the question: “Will the Idaho Statesman allow
itself to be drawn into a series of articles two months before a primary
wherein it makes or repeats disproved claims about a prominent
candidate’s family member instead of headlining the timing, source and
objectives of those who advance ‘unfounded’ attacks?”

While the doings of Mrs. Denney don't necessarily have to do with Mr.
Denney, the fellow who's running for Secretary of State, it's one more
sketchy page in Lawerence's dossier. The Republicans in the House
gave him a go and then decided he was not what they wanted for Speaker.
It's not clear why the people of Idaho should see him qualified to be
their next Secretary of State, especially given that "Idaho has a
tradition of electing secretaries of state with reputations of
integrity, evenhandedness and nonpartisanship," as Sewell put it.

Claudia Bitner's business in what, it's not made exactly clear,
was founded in 1999 as Idaho Internet Associates, Inc., then
MyState USA, Inc. in 2007 (with 50,000,000 shares of common voting stock
authorized, dressed for success), then whoops, a month later make it
MyStateUSA, Inc. and just last month make it
"AlertSense, Inc." with offices in
D.C., New York, Alabama, New Jersey, Idaho and Washington, and its "CEO
and COB" with a D.C. address. Business seems to be picking up
nicely.

8.March.2014

Victims

Rachel Held Evans, on the recent attempts to legislate in favor of some
who imagine themselves persecuted:
Walking
the second mile: Jesus, Discrimination and "Religious Freedom."
The title and the small image of Carl Heinrich Bloch's painting of the
Sermon on the Mount took me back to the most remarkable experience of a
painting I've ever had, in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. We had
of course been to the Hermitage and been overwhelmed by the collection
of European art there, but our afternoon in the Russian Museum was more
memorable for the chance to discover the richness in less well-known art
from east of Europe, and for one painting, in particular.

Time may stand still for its portrait to be painted, a moment as if in
amber, dust slowly layering atop it for subsequent eternity. But sitting
across the crowded gallery from Vasily Polenov's masterpiece, "Christ
and the Adulteress," my spirit flew across time and space and I sat
there in the shade of the stone wall and cypress, avoiding the heat of
the day, experiencing the mob rushing toward us, the demand for
punishment, the young woman facing death, and I was part of the
strangely unmoved circle around the young man with the small stick, on
that day, the still afternoon shattered by blood-thirstiness, these two
stories meeting as a crashing wave against unmoving rock, transfixed by
this man who was turning away the evil of men's hearts—if only for
a moment, but here as I witnessed that moment—with a clever word,
this impossible threshold for judging another.

The painting was
auctioned "for a
fortune" I'm sad to see, 12 years after that afternoon I was in it.
Wikipaintings
has as good a version as can be rendered in pixels perhaps, 2.7Mpx, but
even at that a dim fascsimile of 50+ square feet of meticulous
painting.

A further parallel to be drawn from it changing hands for £4M, in
these years following the many successful efforts to turn evangelical
believers into a political force by creating a sense of "perpetual
victimhood," part of a group that has "become known for crying
“persecution!” upon being wished “Happy Holidays” by a store clerk." The
deep irony is that this sense of "persecution" is being fostered by the
basest commercial interests. Evans' rebuttal, with her emphasis:

"As Christians, our most “deeply held religious belief” is that Jesus
Christ died on the cross for sinful people, and that in imitation of
that, we are called to love God, to love our neighbors, and to love even
our enemies to the point of death.

"So I think we can handle making pastries for gay people."

6.March.2014

All aboard

Growing up steeped in model railroading, I never had much time for
Lionel "toys" because they seemed too big, too clunky, and that
ridiculous third rail that didn't exist in the real world of trains I
could see for myself, just down at the end of the street. Or maybe it
was that we didn't have all the pieces to put something together that
would run. But either kind is a fantasy, and perhaps a strong enough
dash of verisimilitude is enough to provide a springboard for the
imagination.

I'd read about Neil Young and Lionel Trains somewhere along the line,
but without the real-live (or fake-live, I guess) benefit of this bit of
creative filmmaking from 2006:
It's a Fake.
That would be "Clyde Coil" with the memorable "Dang!"
The script's as corny as Kansas in August, but never mind that. The
miniature camera technology and audio editing are a world of fun.
It's a delightful train ride of fantasy and the fakeness doesn't hurt it
a bit.

"He's taking the Fifth, Elijah"

That was "off camera" and Elijah had had his microphone cut off, but
glory hallelujah, it's not so easy as that to stop someone from having
his say in the internet age.
Media
Matters picks it up where the grandstanding chairman of the House
Oversight Committee tried to leave it off, when his attempt to make more
than the facts supported of the IRS "scandal" found itself up a blind
alley and down a dry well.

CUMMINGS: "He continued this theme on Sunday, when he appeared on
Fox News to discuss a Republican staff report, claiming that Miss
Lerner was quote, at the center of this effort to, quote, target
conservative groups. Although he provided a copy of his report to Fox.
He refused my request to provide it to the members of the committee. The
facts are, he cannot support these claims. We have now interviewed 38
employees, who have all told us the same thing. That the White House did
not direct this [inaudible] or even know about it at the time it was
occurring. And none of the witnesses have provided any political
motivation. The Inspector General, Russell George, told us the same
thing. He found no evidence of any White House involvement, or political
motivation."

It's not about oversight, or news, or investigation. Obviously.

Gamification

It probably wasn't the first time I'd heard that word, but a friend
showing me a language app on his iPhone that he was enthused about
applied it to explain, and I understood perfectly. Learning can be fun.
Maybe that explains Twitter too, a bit of a game to punch out 140
characters or less with your thumbs on a handy. I'm not completely
averse to computer games, but maybe I'm getting enough of those
trying to make C# and javascript and html and CSS and SQL do my bidding.
The word bounced out of today's NYT item on how to electrify your
traffic by
Travoltifying.

“It is the gamification of content,” said Joshua Benton, director of the
Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. “Take the same dynamics that lead
games and social sharing to be addictive and use them in a way to
connect to content.”

Or learning, I suppose. Or (and most importantly for the latest business
models) advertising. It could be sometime silly but strangely
compelling, such as an epic name-botch in the middle of a celebrity
fest (that also broke Twitter and raised the hopes of pizza deliverers
throughout the land), or it could be something useful.

ProPublica’s Dollars
for Docs app allows users to find out if their doctor has taken
money from pharmaceutical companies. It has generated seven million
views since it was first posted in 2010.

5.March.2014

Yes, we are projecting weakness

Far be it from me to sort out the way forward on the other side of the
world, but there are some interesting reads in the Washington
Post just now. A gaggle of US ambassadors to Ukraine
advise
restraint:

"The Ukrainians should leave an opening for Putin to back down.

"First, they should continue to exercise restraint in the face of
Russian aggression: Don’t shoot first. ..."

And a bunch more good ideas, none of which involve military hardware or
pounding a shoe on a podium.

Dana Milibank opines on
Operation
Oxymoron, the Republican twist and spin from their assessment of
Obama as "dictator" to namby-pamby appeaser.

"In theory, it is possible for Obama to rule domestic politics with an
iron fist and yet play the 98-pound weakling in foreign affairs. But it
doesn’t make a lot of sense that one person would vacillate between
those two extremes. A better explanation is Obama’s critics are so
convinced that he is wrong about everything that they haven’t paused to
consider the consistency of their accusations."

George Will, Charles Krauthammer, John McCain, William Kristol and
Lindsay Graham should have a parade. I think I strained something
rolling my eyes at
Will's
opinion, such that I didn't even notice he blamed
Obamacare for the invitation to Vlad to impale the Crimea. Thank
goodness for the comment section, 1,364 and counting.

I say let's start by taking Robert Gates' advice,
relayed
by David Ignatius, to "cool it," starting with every Republican
Senator with failed past or future presidential ambitions. You lost.
Obama and Kerry "won," and it's in our best interests that they
succeed. Which god almighty, ought to go without saying, but
apparently does not. Ignatius gives Gates the last word:

“It seems to me that trying to speak with one voice — one American voice
— seems to have become a quaint thing of the past. I regret that
enormously.”

Another golden oldie

Cleaning up last year's Sent Items for archiving, I came across the
photo I'd offered up for the
"Share your
story" part of the Boise 150 Sesquicentennial project, to go with
the story Jeanette submitted, for possible inclusion in their book.
She didn't make that cut, but I looked to see that yes, her story was in
the collection, sans the photograph we'd offered to go with. Also
sans any paragraph breaks, which are you kidding me? That was
certainly not the way she composed it, and leaves it rather unreadable.
I see there are other stories that are well-formatted, and have photos
included, so huh.

You got that right

The NYT juxtaposed a "Quotation of the Day" from John Kerry and Vladimir
Putin in "Today's Headlines" email, and I can't help but think of the
line from the Grateful Dead's "Truckin'": what a long strange trip's it
been.

"It is not appropriate to invade a country and at the end of a barrel of
a gun dictate what you are trying to achieve."

JOHN KERRY, secretary of state, on Russia's actions in Crimea, a region
in Ukraine.

It is, on the other hand, kind of historical.

4.March.2014

The red herring in Arizona

The Wikipedia entry
for Arizona's SB 1062 this year has a useful background synopsis of
the evolution of so-called "religious freedom" legislation on the
federal and state level. The apparent motivation of keeping teh gay
away, and the ensuing political fallout have made a lot of news as the
state legislature debated it, passed it, had three members declare
they'd made a mistake, and then the governor vetoed it.

What else was in there that had some, but probably not enough
coverage was the attempted, remarkable (at least), and outrageous (I
would say) expansion of personhood.
The
text of the bill that would have been Arizona law had the Governor
not rejected it, where "Person" is currently declared to include "a
religious assembly or institition," that legal fiction would have been
expanded to include

The existing law is about the "exercise of religion," defined as
"the ability to act or refusal to act in a manner substantially
motivated by a religious belief, whether or not the exercise is
compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief."

We can only infer others' motivations and beliefs, or perhaps
take their word for what those might be. Thus we would set our system of
jurisprudence on a foundation of quicksand. And who shall speak for the
motivation and beliefs of institutions, corporations and the like, these
creatures who inhabit our brave new world?

For the corporation known as Hobby Lobby, its founder David Green
appears to be the motivating force wishing to dictate to its employees
what sort of health care he'll deign to support, a question that
is now before the Supreme Court of the United States, in a contest
between the Affordable Care Act and the so-called Religious Freedom
"Restoration" Act.
The
Freedom from Religion Foundation, et al. have provided an amicus brief
in the case, noting that Green "essentially maintains his
corporation has a soul and rights of conscience that trump the rights of
conscience of his employees."

“RFRA is being invoked in this case as a license for employers to
influence their female employees’ contraception choices. ...

“If Hobby Lobby can deploy RFRA to block coverage of women’s
reproductive health, the next believer will argue against vaccinations,
and the next against screenings for children or domestic violence
screening and counseling. There is no limit to the variety of religious
believers in the United States, and good reason to know that the
vulnerable will pay the price. ...

“RFRA lets religious citizens rewrite any federal law they don’t like,
to their benefit.”

Proponents of religion trumping law had considerable success in states
after the federal RFRA was ruled inapplicable to state laws in 1997,
but I have yet to see a report about what
organizations might be behind the appearance of this legislation in 16
different states this year. ALEC
is the most usual suspect for coordinated, bad state legislation,
but they don't often fail as spectacularly at changing state laws as
is happening in these cases. The misguided legislation was quashed by
one or the other house of even the reddest of state legislatures, apart
from Arizona's.

Timothy
Egan supposes that "These new religious liberty laws grow out of the
sulfurous talk radio wing that dominates the Republican Party. They get
fevered over 'wars on Christianity' and then propose legislative
remedies to nonexistent problems." He celebrates the "favor" Arizona did
us all, by "showing who’s left on the antigay side of a culture war that
is over."

Can the men and women in the black robes finish the job and establish
the principle that religious and non-religious people should have the
same rights and responsibilities under the law?
(Thanks again to Paul Rolig for
his succinct and compelling statement
before the Idaho House State Affairs Committee last month.)

3.March.2014

Lessons unlearned

Library-borrowed books have a feature owned books don't: a deadline.
Sometimes that works for me, sometimes not so much. After a generous
4-week loan, augmented with an equally generous 4-week renewal, here it
is the last day and I'm trying to get through Eli Pariser's
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, and bubbling
over with its interesting insights. One of them struck a chord with how
strange I found Russ Fulcher's parochial takeaway from his decades of
traveling the world on business (in yesterday's post):

"As it turns out, being around people and ideas unlike oneself is one of
the better ways to cultivate this sense of open-mindedness and wide
categories. Psychologists Charlan Nemeth and Julianne Kwan discovered
that bilinguists are more creative than monolinguists—perhaps
because they have to get used to the proposition that things can be
viewed in several different ways. Even forty-five minutes of exposure to
a different culture can boost creativity: When a group of American
students was shown a slideshow about China as opposed to one about the
United States, their scores on several creativity tests went up.
..."

It makes me wonder still more about Fulcher's world tour. The
news
in November when he announced his candidacy (leading with "shouts of
'Amen!'" no less) says he was a marketing executive for Micron and
Preco.

Electronic components and "electronic industrial-safety products" don't
require a great depth of cross-cultural understanding, and the laborious
part of travel makes one glad to be home, and celebrating our "divinely
inspired" system, "where the people are supposed to be the pinnacle of
governance."

After a month's travel around Idaho to weigh a run against two-term GOP
Gov. Butch Otter, Fulcher said: "We are in danger of losing that
uniqueness, that specialness. Most of the people of Idaho aren't feeling
like they're the pinnacle of governance right now."

Interesting pitch. "Elect me" and I will lead you all to the pinnacle.
Where no government will help you afford healthcare, and our educational
standards will be all our own. His inspiring Tea Party success stories
are Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Idaho's own Raúl Labrador,
his fellow travelers members of such upstanding groups as Glenn Beck's
9/12 Project, Ada County Militia, Oath Keepers, Idaho Open Carry, the
John Birch Society.

Fulcher starts by celebrating "friends like this," seeming to say that
he can't really be himself in most situations. He's "a farm kid" who
spent 24 years traveling around the world from which he learned... "just
how special we have it here." (I didn't travel the world for anywhere
near 24 hours, and I like where I live, but what I learned is that we're
not the only ones with good ideas.)

"This health care system that's been invited into this state is the
wrong path," Fulcher said. "That's right," from the crowd, and applause.
Idahoans need to control their education, too. It's a conspiracy
theory!

"Another annoyance that's hanging out there," Fulcher said, to talk
about his non-negotiables: our freedom of religion, our economic
freedom, and our right to bear arms. Mainly it's D.C., but "there's some
of that goin on right here in this state."

Guns and Ammo magazine says Idaho is the "32nd most friendly state in the
nation towards gun ownership," Fulcher said. "Folks, we need to drive
that number up." [applause]

He's looking for "wise counsel," especially from people who think most
exactly the way he does, but he was on a schedule, and was going to have
one of his staff collect Q&A after he ducked out.

"If this effort is not blessed, I don't even want the title."

The TITLE, you say? As if we were electing the Pope of Conservatism?
We're talking about a JOB in PUBLIC SERVICE.

As he wound up to his conclusion, somebody in the crowd interrupted,
which was strange, to declare that "The man you see before you is the
same man everywhere he goes," which is even stranger, given the way this
little presentation started. Pastor somebody?

"This isn't just a speech, this is the man that he is."

Fulcher wrapped it up by telling the group:

"Don't . You . Back . Down. You're standing on righteous ground."

"Sovereignty is not something you ask for, it's something you have a
right to, and you take."

[Voice in the crowd: "You got that right."]

"Sovereignty means we claim the blessings we were rightfully granted, by
God."

1.Mar.2014

Self under construction

Unfortunately, I had enough command of the English language to dodge
whatever requirements my alma mater imposed upon its children, and never
enjoyed (or endured) the likes of
John
Rember's Comp as Philosophy class. The challenge was to demonstrate
proficiency by writing an essay, I forget how long it was, and show that
really, I didn't need to take English 103 and 104 now, did I?
I don't remember what it was about, and I hope I didn't save it, but I
vaguely recall a certain peevishness at the task. I took English in high
school, after all. There were more interesting things to study, I was
sure.

With some determination, I might find 8,000 words I'd emitted in
columns for The Argonaut
and consider my unguided search for authenticity as a 20-something,
along with the cavernous space between how much I thought I knew and,
well, what I think I know now, I guess. I'm the measure of all things,
not because I'm an authority, but just because that's the way it works
for all of us. There were a few letters pro and con, but no one staying
up late or working over the weekend to put red ink on my work, let alone
discuss the next assignment.

In the more mundane realm of engineering, I learned the truth of what
Rember quotes from Joan Didion, "that she never knows what she thinks
about anything until she starts putting it down on paper." I could think
I had something understood from cause to effect, defect to fix to
acceptable quality, but the more interesting and complicated problems
didn't work that way. It wasn't until I had to write a detailed memo or
report and marshall facts and an argument that the lacunae and flaws in
my comprehension would become apparent. On occasion you can get lucky
and stumble onto an answer that is close enough to right that it works,
and move on. Most of the time you have to ask the right question and
plod through the hard work of discernment before finding what
matters.

Rember's capsule trajectory of modern life is a bit harsh, fired for
effect, and leaving his readers to recognize that between the
"enviable two-week vacations for 40 years" and "end[ing] up demented and
dying in a good nursing home" there is the possibility freedom from the
oppression of work may leave time for some lucid moments to bubble to
the surface. (Or even in spite of a too-busy schedule? Some people do
their best work under pressure, I've heard.)

Anyway. New month, a new season a-budding, and another fine essay to
recommend in the Boise Weekly, especially those last four
paragraphs ...